Growing Mold
by Paicon RMF
Summary: Dib has to clean up under his bed, which he hasn't cleaned out in forever. Turns out, he isn't the only thing living in his room... *Updated, finally...*
1. Banana Peels, Books, and Pants

Growing Mold  
By Paige  
  
(Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim, or anything having to do with IZ. The monster is mine.)  
  
It was the most sickening, vile, repulsive thing ever. It was shriveled and brown, and reeked the most awful smell, a smell that protruded from its revolting wrinkled body like a tail from a mouse behind.  
  
"This is disgusting!"  
  
Dib pulled the nasty brown mess from the front of the muddled mass of junk jutting out from under his bed. Dib wrinkled his nose in abhorrence.  
  
"I don't see why I have to clean under my bed," he muttered to himself as he picked up the gross, malodorous brown pile and carried its bulk to the trashcan. "How old is this banana peel anyway?" He tossed the aged fruit peel into the trashcan.  
  
He turned back to the pile below his bed, undeterred by the filthy blob he had just removed from the pile. He yanked a stack of books from the chaos.  
  
"Hey, I didn't know I had this book," he said, looking through the heap of books. It was one of Gaz's books, one of the ones he had sworn he'd never seen before. "I think I'll just hide that one till I can sneak it... somewhere that's... not in my room." He stuffed the book into a box labeled 'Cheese', and then placed one of his books into his nearly empty bookcase.  
  
"Grr..."  
  
Dib stopped moving in mid-place. "Hello? Gaz? Is that you?"   
  
Silence.  
  
Dib shook his head. "I think the smell from that banana peel is getting to me. Now I'm hearing things." He continued to put books in the bookcase.  
  
"Grr!"  
  
Dib jolted around, and stared into the dark, befuddled abyss under his bed. It was his bed that had growled at him!  
  
Dib narrowed his eyes. His bed had growled at him... or the mess under it had. He continued staring. "Hello?" he said. He inched closer to his bed, listening for more sounds from its depths. He stood staring at the heap of junk under his bed for a few minutes, just listening for sounds.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Dib shook his head. This was stupid. There was not a monster under his bed. There wasn't.  
  
Dib reached into the messiness, and start to drag a pair of pants from the mound of debris.  
  
The pants pulled back.  
  
"What the..." Dib pulled harder on the pants. They pulled back again.  
  
"GRRRARRRR!"  
  
Dib let go of the pants, flabbergasted. The pants were pulled back under the bed, like somebody slurping a spaghetti noodle. Dib stared in the chaos under his bed in shock.  
  
Dib stared. "My bed... just ate... my pants..." he said.  
  
His bed had just eaten his pants.  
  
His BED had just EATEN his pants!  
  
HIS BED HAD JUST EATEN HIS PANTS!  
  
Now, had Dib been the type of person who didn't believe in aliens and the paranormal, he probably would have freaked out because he didn't know what had just happened, and wouldn't have been able to understand it.  
  
But Dib's calculating, paranormal-believing mind came up with the only logical conclusion...  
  
A BED MONSTER HAD JUST EATEN HIS PANTS!  
  
Dib ran down the stairs screaming, shouting, and shrieking, yelling, panicking, and BAM!  
  
Dib hit a wall.  
  
*****  
  
"Wha..." Dib woke up, his head throbbing, pounding, and trying to explode. He shook the pain to the back of his mind, and looked around.  
  
He was lying across the hallway in front of the stairs, his feet in front of the wall... the wall that now had a hole in the shape of his head where there hadn't previously been one.  
  
Gaz walked into the hallway that connected the living room and kitchen to the upstairs, stepped over him, and continued on her way to the kitchen. Her eyes never once left the screen of her Game Slave.  
  
Dib still didn't move; he was trying to stop the monster headache that he had.  
  
His sister reentered the hallway, now playing her Game Slave with one hand, a soda in her other. She stopped by Dib.  
  
"Move," she said. "I'm not dropping my game or my soda trying to step over you. Move now, or else."  
  
Dib, deciding quickly that he honestly didn't want to find out what his sister meant by 'or else', stood. His head swam as Gaz walked past him, toward the living room again.  
  
Dib climbed up the stairs as his headache dissipated. He stepped into his room, and the bed monster growled at him.  
  
Dib glowered at the dark space where the bed monster resided. It was time to test this monster.  
  
(AN: A cheese joke and a pants joke in one story. Neway, I don't know for sure how many stories Dib's house is, so I'm going to say two (with an attic, it's three.) If I'm wrong, oh well.)  



	2. Test One (Ew...)

Growing Mold  
Part 2: Test One (Ew...)  
By Paigey-Wan  
  
(Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. The bed monster is mine.)  
  
Dib vaulted over the box labeled 'Cheese', and dashed down the stairs. He sped his way into the laundry room.  
  
"Where is it, where is it?" Dib muttered, tossing stuff from the laundry room into the kitchen.  
  
High and low, high and low, all around, everywhere there was, he hunted. He tossed dish soap, dryer sheets, baskets, pants, and other things out. He searched all over, up and down, all throughout the room. He came across spiders, really old molding, rotten, decaying cheese, and another one of Gaz's books.  
  
Then, he'd found it. There it was, in all its glory, the magnificent splendor, a gift from the powers from above, the grandeur that was... a broom.  
  
"Ah ha!" he cried. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft of that wonderful broom, and bounded back up the steps to his room.  
  
Dib wrenched the books back off his bookcase and laid them on the floor in front of him, five in a row. Using the butt of the magnificent broom he found, he slowly pushed the first book towards his bed.  
  
Creeping it, crawling it, he inched the book toward the bed. Pushing, shoving, it was almost there...  
  
WAM!  
  
A giant, decayed, moldy hand exploded out from his bed. The disgusting, rotten grabbing appendage grasped the book that Dib was sliding toward the bed and yanked it under. All that was left was a fetid, fusty, rancid pile of slime.  
  
Dib resisted his stomach's sudden urge to show him exactly what the cafeteria had fed him at lunch that day. "Sick..." Dib said.  
  
Dib's stomach contented itself to somersaulting and loop-de-looping as he began to shove a second book toward his bed and the putrid monster underneath.  
  
Sliding over the floor, propelled by Dib's broom, the book crept ever closer, closer, closer to the abyss. Creeping, creeping, crawling, sneaking...  
  
WAM!  
  
Again, it struck. The reeking, disgusting hand shot out of the dark, imposing hole. It closed its rancid fingers around the book, and snaked back into the impenetrable darkness. Once again, it left behind only a steaming, nauseating pile of slimy mucus.  
  
Dib's stomach heaved; a horrid taste invaded his mouth. He battled back the urge to find out how long his breakfast really stayed in his stomach.  
  
Dib mustered up his reserves, held his breath, and began to slide a third book in the direction of his bed. He pushed the broom into the book slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, carefully, time-wastingly slow...  
  
The book crawled across the floor, nearer to the two gross sickening mounds of putrid, rotting sludge. Closer it crept, closer... closer...  
  
WAM!  
  
The hand raced out of its hiding, stealing the book from the floor, leaving in its place another offensive, atrocious clump of goop.  
  
Dib collapsed to the floor. His mouth opened, and out of it poured a putrefied mass of half-digested slop that could only be his lunch. 'Odd,' he thought. 'That's what it looked like going in...'  
  
The short, pasty boy lurched to his feet, the combined smell of the four piles of malodorous gunk (that is to say, the three left by the monster, and his former lunch) threatening to force his breakfast out as well. Dib staggered out of his room and down the stairs. His stomach started recovering as soon as he entered the kitchen.  
  
Dib tried to run, but ended up sliding across the linoleum instead, his face stopping him in front of the kitchen sink's cabinet.  
  
(AN: Next stop... cleaning (or at least, disposing of the smell of) the goop, and test numero dos...)  



	3. The Poop-Scooper

Growing Mold  
Part 3: The Poop-Scooper  
By Paigey-Wan  
  
(Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. The Bed Monster is mine.)  
  
Dib sat up, rubbing his aching nose. 'At least it isn't bleeding,' he though wryly.  
  
He quickly took off his socks. 'Yeah, that was smart Dib,' he thought. 'Let's run on the tile with our socks on.'  
  
Dib stood. The tile was cold beneath his feet, which wasn't a big surprise, as tile always seems to be cold.  
  
Dib knelt and opened the cupboard beneath the sink, searching for something to clean the festering, smelly piles of gunk decorating the floor of his room. 'Raid?... no. Lysol?... is the smell worth it? Rat poison?... RAT POISON?! Why do we have rat poison?... Well, whatever. A poop-scooper?... Why do we... No, I don't want to know... but that'll do, I suppose.'  
  
Dib grabbed the poop-scooper and ran back up the stairs, his feet plip-ploping up the wooden stairs. He stopped in front of his door, took a deep breath, and plunged into the horrible smelling abyss of his room.  
  
Dib knelt in front of one of the rancid mounds of goop. Dib pointed the poop-scooper at the gunk. He opened the poop-scooper and it quickly sucked up the bad stinking junk. Dib dropped the poop-scooper in surprise.  
  
Dib shook his head. This day was progressively getting weirder. He picked up the poop-scooper, opened it, and looked inside. The poop-scooper pulled in his hair spike. Dib yelped.  
  
He pulled and yanked on the poop-scooper, ineffectually trying to get his hair out of it. He tried and tried, tried to pry his hair from the poop-scooper. He tugged, and struggled, and yet, was unsuccessful.  
  
He staggered out of his room, still attempting to get the poop-scooper to release his hair. He stumbled - STAIRS! - he tumbled down, down, head, heels, poop-scooper...  
  
CRASH!  
  
Dib landed brusquely at the bottom of the stairway.  
  
The world began to blacken.  
  
"Vacuum function disabled."  
  
The edges of his vision darkened.  
  
"Vacuum... function?" Dib asked the air.  
  
The colors faded to black and white.  
  
"So that's why..."  
  
Darkness.  
  
---------------  
  
Dib felt a jolt of hurting awaken him. Gaz was stalking into the kitchen a ways down the hall. She had kicked him on her way there, Dib supposed. He hated to admit it, but she kicked hard.  
  
Dib blinked, trying to gain his bearings. He was lying at the foot of the stairwell, again, with a throbbing pain in his head, again. Resting beside him was a poop-scooper.  
  
Why did they have a poop-scooper? It wasn't like they had a dog.  
  
Why did HE have the poop-scooper?  
  
Dib racked his brain, trying to remember.  
  
'Wait...' Dib thought. 'I remember! I was using it to clean up the nasty smelling mess my bed monster left on my floor... It sucked up the reeking goo...stuff... but why? Why? Why, why, why, wh-'  
  
"DIB!"  
  
His sister's yell brought the boy out of his reverie. "Gaz?"  
  
The wine-haired girl kicked the poop scooper up the stairs. 'She should play football... but then she might kill someone,' Dib thought.  
  
"Dib," his younger sister said, seemingly calm, which was a sure sign to Dib that she was about to destroy him. Dib got a fleeting mental image of his sister squishing his head. He giggled.  
  
His sister glared. "Dib," she said again. "I nearly tripped on that stupid poop-scooper and it almost made me drop my GameSlave. I should destroy you here and now."  
  
"But you are lucky, Dib. I'm in a good mood right now. You have five seconds to be GONE, and if I find you lying out here again, I will be forced to destroy you." Dib stared at her for a moment, confused.  
  
"One," Gaz started counting.  
  
"Vacuum function enabled."  
  
'That's right! It had a vacuum function!'  
  
"Two."  
  
'It tried to suck up my hair! I stumbled around and fell down the stairs!'  
  
"Three."  
  
'...I should move.'  
  
"Four."  
  
Dib stood and bounded up the stairs, grabbing the poop-scooper on his way.  
  
Gaz's eyes reconnected themselves to her GameSlave, and Gaz began to play again.  
  
-----------  
  
Dib scuttled into his room. He quickly knelt in front of each of the putrid lumps of disgusting slime, and pointed the poop-scooper at each of them. It sucked every single one up. Dib set the poop-scooper on his bookshelf.  
  
"Okay, bed monster," Dib said to the dark space under his bed which he knew contained his bed monster. "I'll... be right back," he said, grabbing an empty trash bag and darting out of his room.  
  
(A/N: Okay, I lied. No test number two... And sorry it took so long! I got distracted.) 


	4. Lysol is from He…Heck… Yeah, That’s It, ...

Growing Mold  
Part 4: Lysol is from He...Heck... Yeah, That's It, Heck...  
  
(Disclaimer: This may come as a shock to some of you, but I don't own Invader Zim. Go fig. The BM is mine.)  
  
Dib ran down to the bottom step and stopped. He peeked out from behind the stairwell, looking left, then right. He spotted nothing to stop him from reaching his goal, and darted into the kitchen, trash bag flapping behind him.  
  
Dib's bare feet pit-patted across the tile. They came to a stop in front of the cabinet under the sink.  
  
Dib knelt and opened the cupboard. He grabbed the Raid(TM), the Lysol(TM), the rat poison (after all, why not?), and all the assorted soaps and various other things that always manage to find residency under the sink. He threw them into the trash bag, and tiptoed to the opening to the connecting hallway.  
  
------------------------  
  
Gaz sat on the coach silently, playing her latest, greatest game on her pretty, red GameSlave. Beep-bio-beepity-blup-blop... The little 'human' ship moved around on the screen, blasting the little alien ships to little digital pieces.  
  
Bloop-bleep-bloip...  
  
She caught movement, in the hallway, out of the corner of her eye.  
  
Gaz kept pressing the buttons on the GameSlave, watching her brother peek out of the kitchen. He looked around, and then snuck up the stairs, toting a trash bag that was clinking suspiciously.  
  
Boop-boop-boooooop...  
  
The words GAME OVER flashed over the screen of her GameSlave.  
  
Her eyes narrowed even more, if possible. Dib would soon be soundly obliterated... after she beat this game, of course.  
  
----------------  
  
Dib scurried into his room, lugging the trash bag behind him. He set the bag down on the floor, and opened it. He stuck his hand in, feeling around, half expecting something to jump up and eat his hand. His hand closed around a cool metal container. Dib pulled his hand out, and with it came... A can of SHAVING CREAM!!!!!!!  
  
'...Shaving cream?!'  
  
Dib sighed. He threw the can under his bed, and the Bed Monster gobbled it up like candy.  
  
Dib reached in again, and this time pulled the Lysol(TM) out of the bag. He pointed the can of odorous disinfectant at the Bed Monster's location, and sprayed.  
  
He squirted the spray for about a minute, until he heard a sound, a coarse, raucous sound.  
  
-COUGH!-  
  
The Bed Monster was coughing.  
  
Cough!  
  
And so was Dib.  
  
'Apparently,' Dib thought harshly as he coughed, 'They forget to warn you that Lysol(TM) is bad for YOU as well as the germs.'  
  
Dib staggered out of his room, and down the stairs, coughing the entire way. He stumble into the kitchen and on into the garage.  
  
He breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of tire rubber, motor oil, and dust; his lungs finally worked again. Dib grabbed the leaf blower from where it leaned.  
  
Dib took one last deep breath. He waved goodbye to Bigfoot (who was using the chainsaw this time, to cut up something Dib was sure he probably didn't want to see), and exited the realm of the cars.  
  
---------------  
  
Dib stood outside his room. He had to go in, he knew that, but... the smell... awful, florid smell... Dib shook his head. If he ever wanted to regain his room, he was going to have to brave it.  
  
Dib shot into his room, straight to the window. He heaved it open and raced back out. He took another deep breath and grabbed the leaf blower. He turned around, facing the portal to his room.  
  
Dib ran into his room and clicked on the leaf blower and... nothing.  
  
Dib looked down at it.  
  
It wasn't plugged into an outlet. Dib groaned. 'Figures.'  
  
He set the leaf blower down, his head now swimming with lack of oxygen, and grabbed the plug. He walked out into the hall (clack clackity clack, as the leaf blower was dragged behind him), and took another deep breath. He walked back in, halfway across the room, and plugged it into the socket.  
  
VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!  
  
"Bla-!" Dib clawed at the ground, against the sudden blast of air. He had, of course, forgotten to click it off.  
  
'Why does this have to happen to me?!'  
  
Dib clawed his way across the floor. Inch, inch, inch... He dug his fingernails into the hard wood of his floor ('Note to self: carpet is good.')... Inch, inch, inch...  
  
'Almost there...'  
  
Just centimeters to go. Dib scrabbled a little closer. The leaf blower kept blowing indiscriminately. The ruthless air stream pushed his scythe-like hair back.  
  
Just centimeters to go. Dib pulled himself forward, stretching one arm as far as he could.  
  
Just centimeters to go. Dib pushed his arm out more. His fingers brushed the button.  
  
Just centimeters to go. Dib stretched his arm excruciatingly far, and farther still.  
  
Just centimeters to go. 'Just a little bit farther.'  
  
CLICK!  
  
Dib fell to the floor and thought, 'Hey, at least the smell's gone.'  
  
(AN: Hey, here it is!!!!!!!!!! WOO!!!!!!!!!! I found it! I've had this done for at least two months, but I lost it (I wrote it on paper). I really liked it though, and didn't want to just try to do it again. Goody... Welp, I'll get to work on the next part.) 


End file.
